Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday May 12, 2014 @12:08PM
from the build-it-better dept.

cartechboy (2660665) writes "To date, carbon fiber has been expensive and presents different production challenges than traditional steel and aluminum. But now it seems as if the advanced material is about to become truly mainstream--BMW has announced it plans to triple carbon fiber reinforced plastic output at its Moses Lake facility in Washington state. Currently, the SGL Group plant, a joint venture partner of BMW Group, has the production capacity for about 3,000 tons of carbon fiber per annum. Two productions lines are currently going with the output dedicated to BMW's i3 and i8 plug-in vehicles. SGL is already working on a third and fourth production line which would double production to 6,000 tons per year, but a fifth and sixth are on the way, set to triple capacity to 9,000 tons every year. This extra output won't be reserved exclusively for BMW's i range. Several future BMW models will make use of the lightweight material. Now the only question is how long before carbon fiber vehicle construction becomes as common as aluminum?"

Once I learned about carbon fiber thermoplastics [fiberforge.com], I realized that carbon fiber would be amenable to mass production. The idea is that you lay down the fibers using robotic technology. Then you encase the fiber in a plastic resin that becomes soft at high temperatures. Now you have made a flat carbon fiber sheet similar to sheet steel. Finally you use a hot press that presses the sheet into nearly any shape desired...ie. car parts. This is similar to how we form steel into car body parts. This processes is highly suitable for mass production. So yes, carbon fiber is becoming mainstream.

So let me see if I understand your argument... "Western Commies" want people to dump cars for bikes so they'll be more reliant on public transport and more easily controlled? That makes no sense.

I know people who regularly rode their bikes for a 40 mile round-trip commute. They still owned cars, they just used them less often (saving gas and getting a good cardio workout in the process). Last I checked the idea of not spending money when you don't absolutely have to was very Capitalist.

We went through this exact thing with bicycle frames about 10 years ago. CF is lighter and more rigid than aluminum, but if it gets a crack or gouge in it, the frame can't be mended... it has to be tossed, and the only real way to "recycle" CF is to toss it into a thermal depolymerization machine and "boil" the epoxy and CF (using lots of water and heat) back to crude oil.

CF has its place, but on a vehicle where weight is less a limiting issue than on bicycles, it might be best off to stick with recyclable stuff like aluminum because of the volume of vehicles made. Aluminum can be recycled fairly easily... CF can't be used for much once it hits the scrapyard.

There's nothing hypothetical about it. CF does dissipate energy away from the driver of an F1 race car upon impact.

"At the heart of the modern Formula One car is the 'monocoque' (French for ‘single shell’), or 'tub'. It incorporates the driver's survival cell and cockpit, and also forms the principal component of the car's chassis, with engine and front suspension mounted directly to it. Its roles as structural component and safety device both require it to be as strong as possible. Like the res

...CF is lighter and more rigid than aluminum, but if it gets a crack or gouge in it, the frame can't be mended... it has to be tossed...

Aluminum bikes have problems too. Pure aluminum has zero fatigue limit [wikipedia.org], which means that it WILL eventually crack. Zero fatigue limit means that even the smallest stress on an aluminum frame will cause it to fatigue. If you knocked on an aluminum frame with your fingernail enough times in the same spot, it would eventually fail.

You're going a little over board on the fatigue issue with Aluminum. How many times do you think you'd have to tap that frame with your fingernail?

If you are really worried about it, get a steel frame.

Not really. Riding on city roads places constant stress on frames. The zero fatigue limit on aluminum bikes basically means that your bike frame has a limit on how much it can be ridden. Ride it enough and it will crack. I have personally seen two cracked aluminum frames.

At the very least, I would never buy an aluminum frame unless I know that the frame is an aluminum alloy that has a non-zero fatigue limit. I would also never buy a used aluminum downhill bike.

You're going a little over board on the fatigue issue with Aluminum. How many times do you think you'd have to tap that frame with your fingernail?

If you are really worried about it, get a steel frame.

Not really. Riding on city roads places constant stress on frames. The zero fatigue limit on aluminum bikes basically means that your bike frame has a limit on how much it can be ridden. Ride it enough and it will crack. I have personally seen two cracked aluminum frames.

At the very least, I would never buy an aluminum frame unless I know that the frame is an aluminum alloy that has a non-zero fatigue limit. I would also never buy a used aluminum downhill bike.

I suppose I just don't ride enough to have a huge issue with this. I have 10 year old Aluminum frames that have not cracked. If I was out riding most days of the week an Aluminum frame might not last long enough, but I don't.

Downhill bikes are a whole other ball of wax. It's not my style of riding at all, so I can't imagine myself buying one. My assumption is that even with a steel or titanium frame the amount of stresses involved in downhill drops could still get over the fatigue limit and lead to an e

Aluminum bikes have problems too. Pure aluminum has zero fatigue limit [wikipedia.org], which means that it WILL eventually crack. Zero fatigue limit means that even the smallest stress on an aluminum frame will cause it to fatigue. If you knocked on an aluminum frame with your fingernail enough times in the same spot, it would eventually fail.

While it is true Aluminum doesn't have a fatigue limit, the breaking point depends on what the stresses are in the material. "will eventually crack" can translate to 20 minutes of riding, or 20 million years of riding. An aluminum frame can be made where its fatigue life well exceeds the practical life of the bicycle.

If it takes 4.54 billion years of knocking the frame with your fingernail for the frame to fail, there really isn't a problem with it.

Counterpoint, I had one of these [google.com], and the down tube / head tube joint did crack, in fact it only lasted 3 or 4 years. I would imagine a lot has changed since then though. (Also, Canondale did replace it with a newer model, on warranty).

No we aren't [slate.com]. America has enough landfill space to last for centuries at current rates. The "landfill crisis" that was all the rage in the 1990s was made up by journalists and never had any connection to reality.

What will you do after centuries? No, not "you" personally, but what do you suggest to be done? I suggest coolsnowman was nothing but perfectly accurate when he said "we are running out of places to just put trash". It's just that the time scale doesn't happen to worry you.

1. Open new landfills.2. Dig up the carbon fiber and incinerate it.3. Use 2314 technology to solve the problem.4. Calculate the percentage of landfill space likely to be occupied by carbon fiber, and realize that it is insignificant. Disposable diapers are a bigger problem.5. Improve human intelligence enough so that people realize CO2 emmissions, and debt from importing oil are REAL problems, and to make them worse to deal with some manufactured crisis about "landfill space" is pretty stupid.

That doesn't mean you want to waste a lot of energy generating non-recyclable carbon fiber products that will fill up landfills.

The amount of energy saved by building lighter vehicles dwarfs the amount saved through recycling.

I'm guessing you aren't aware of the energy savings from recycling aluminum [wikipedia.org]. Recycling aluminum requires roughly 5% of the energy required to create it from bauxite. Furthermore you can recycle aluminum multiple times whereas you effectively cannot recycle carbon fiber at all. (technically it is possible but economically it is not) Much or even all of the fuel savings through l

That doesn't mean you want to waste a lot of energy generating non-recyclable carbon fiber products that will fill up landfills.

It only takes up space in landfills if you fail to incinerate it. You need a proper incineration plant to avoid generating toxic smoke, but that is rather old technology at this point, and you get useful heat out of the process.

I think the nonrecyclability of CF is one of the things that makes it more attractive. CF locks that carbon away forever. Once its buried in the landfill I'm pretty sure no one is going to try to dig it up to burn it.

In a sense, CF is the ultimate recycling of carbon. It starts as plastic (recycled?) fibers that get baked until there's nothing left but carbon. When the CF vehicle crashes or otherwise ends up being scrapped, all that carbon goes into the ground.

What would be really great is if they could extract the carbon for CF from the CO and CO2 in the air. You'd drive around in it for a while then bury it in the ground.

Depends on how you define mainstream. By the definition of belonging to or characteristic of a principal, dominant, or widely accepted group, probably not. They'd probably be considered more niche then mainstream since they only have about 2% of the US market with 300k vehicles sold in the US. And if you look at what BMW is manufacturing the carbon fiber for, the i3 and i8 electric vehicles, it's even a smaller niche with a total of 50k units

It might not be Ford's 15.6 million cars but 1.86 million car sales isn't exactly niche either. Perhaps your "for the 1%" mindset is a bit inaccurate. As to the comparison, piecing together information... 20% of world steel output goes to automobile manufacturing. World crude steel output for 2012 was 1548 Mt so I suppose that means about 309.6 megatons goes to cars. So relatively speaking 9000 tons isn't much of a dent, but it does sound like a significant step towards building manufacturer confidence

OK, so a pedal bicycle is a very low powered road vehicle, but the same equation applies. To achieve a better power to weight ratio, you can either increase power or decrease weight - and decreased weight has the added bonus of lower loads on suspension and tyres in fast corners.

Not sure if it applies to bikes, but with a car, unless you're generating a significant amount of downforce, you want a fair amount of weight on the tires during cornering. Especially on the control (steering) wheels.

Not really, cornering in a regular car (we are not talking race vehicles here) depends mostly on the coefficient of friction between the tires and road surface and the amount of body roll (suspension and weight). Decreasing the weight doesn't change the coefficient of friction but will decrease the amount of body roll so making things lighter will help out in cornering. If being light weight meant it would handle like crap then those tiny little Lotus Elises would probably be amongst the worst handling vehi

Not really, cornering in a regular car (we are not talking race vehicles here) depends mostly on the coefficient of friction between the tires and road surface and the amount of body roll (suspension and weight). Decreasing the weight doesn't change the coefficient of friction but will decrease the amount of body roll so making things lighter will help out in cornering.

Decreasing the weight does decreases the coefficient of friction, as it lessens the amount of force that's pushing the tires against the pavement. That is, if I understand the Wiki article correctly when it states:

The coefficient of friction (COF), often symbolized by the Greek letter , is a dimensionless scalar value which describes the ratio of the force of friction between two bodies and the force pressing them together.

If being light weight meant it would handle like crap then those tiny little Lotus Elises would probably be amongst the worst handling vehicles on the road today but instead considered to be pretty close to the best.

One of the best, under $100K, in America. [caranddriver.com] But, according to the article I just cited, even with a large amount of that handling prowess being the result of fancy electronic nannies, there were still issues of lift-off understeer, likely a result of poor weight distribution common with mid/rear en

Amontons' First Law: The force of friction is directly proportional to the applied load.

Therefore, in a perfect world, it doesn't matter at all how heavy your car is, it should go around corners at the same speed all other things being equal. However, it's (obviously) more complicated than that. Generally the lighter your car, the better it will go around a corner. This is mainly due to the way the tyre interacts with the road, and the way it deforms under load.

That doesn't apply to bicycles and motorcycles because they lean and the center of mass is moved so that you don't depend on the width of the contact patch to provide added traction to prevent sliding.

It also had a 0-60 time of 13 seconds, a top speed of 90 mph, and a fair amount of its total weight hovering over the control wheels; and I still wouldn't recommend trying to take a hard corner at any decent rate of speed in one of those things, any more than I would recommend doing the same in a Model A.

Look at F1 cars as an example: when not screaming down the track, generating tons of downforce, and keeping the slicks nice and hot, they're damn near impossible to control, let alone corner.

The F1 tires have lousy grip at low temperatures. Give them a set of tires optimized for low speed plus traction control and ESP to keep the engine from using up all the grip, and they will steer just fine at low speeds.

I have never actually driven an original Mini myself, but it felt quite like a go-cart to me as a passenger. It did not seem to have any obvious handling problems despite some rather spirited driving.

I have driven an Open Corsa (Vauxhall Nova?) original version quite a lot, and that is not m

I had a buddy in high school who drove a Pontiac Fiero to its limits, and lemme tell ya - I've done some stupid, scary shit in cars before, but I've never been frightened (like, frightened) like I was riding around gravel roads in that old rust-bucket, when he would let off the throttle mid-corner, and the next thing I know we're spinning off through some farmer's field.

Now that I think about it, those experiences (and pulling seat foam out of my ass for a week) may have colored my opinion on the handling a

FWD is predictable and you always get to choose which direction you fly off the road in. You get on the gas in a corner and you get understeer. You get off the gas in a turn and you get oversteer. You can dial it the way you want it. With RWD you get oversteer on and off the gas. It's dicier. You can easily get wedged to where you run out of neutral understeer, and you're going for a spin tail first no matter how good you are.

To achieve a better power to weight ratio, you can either increase power or decrease weight...

However, as in the realm of cars, the reduction in weight that carbon fiber offers only makes sense in extreme cases (usually the very high end cars).

Average weight for a new road bike is around 20-22lb. Steel frame ones can be easily found weighing less (ex. 19lb), same for both the others. Really high end carbon fiber bikes may weight around 14lb. A fairly cheap steel road bike frame alone is about 4.5lb (ex. http://www.performancebike.com... [performancebike.com])..... now to my point... I can afford to lose a lot more than

Ownership of a late model BMW might not fit the budget of most blue-collar folks, but if you head to any moderately affluent city you'll spot nearly as many BMWs as you do Hyundais. Globally annual sales of BMWs are only about 1/7 that of Ford.

Well a good used one is very attainable since they tend to not hold their value. I figure I will probably end up driving a used carbon fiber BMW in about 10 years unless my current one gets totaled in an accident before then. Also there are lots of people who like to think they are rich, that and I don't think an entry level 1 series isn't that expensive.

It'd be interesting to see how they plan to do this. The main obstacle to mass production using CFRP (or any fiber-reinforced plastics) is that it takes much longer to put fibers in a mould, impregnate them and have the mixture dry to the point where it can be removed from the mould, than it would to stamp a sheet of aluminium into shape.

BMW has already been putting CF into weight-sensitive areas of the car, like the roof panels on certain models. Up high is one of the worst places to carry weight from a vehicle dynamics perspective; it makes nearly every aspect of vehicle handling worse.

One practical difficulty of CF for general automotive use is that it's not really repairable.

Of course, modern autobody repair is often about replacing affected panels with pristine replacements (either new or from junk yard cars), as opposed to trying to repair an existing panel. So, in that sense, CF might be a fine choice, as the lack of reparability is in practice a non-issue.

BMW is already gluing cars together -- for almost 10 years they have been building the front clip on certain models out of aluminum, and in effect gluing it to the remainder of the unibody, which is conventional steel.

Also, BMW has been designing recyclability into its cars also for at least 15 years. I seem to recall that the E46 3 series was something like 90% recoverable.

I don't expect they would turn away from their recyclability commitment, so they must have a plausible plan for how they would like to apply it to CF parts.

Cars are one product on the market that is highly recyclable with for profit recycling of almost every part, the recycling is not only easy but common. Most cars are 90+% recyclable with that 10% or so being things like tires and foam for the seats that generally can't be made into new products. This is partly because cars are made of steel and steel is the most easily recycled material we use. Every steel smelter can recycle steel, no special equipment or processes are required.

No, there is still basically the the same coefficient of friction between the tires and pavement, so yes there is less downward force but unless you are experiencing lots of cross winds you will never notice. Given how heavy most vehicles are now days lightening them up would probably be a good thing. Having driven several vehicles that have weighed 2000lbs or less as well as ones weighing over 5000lbs cornering and handling have more to do with suspension and center of gravity than with vehicle weight.

No, half the weight does not mean half the fuel usage. Windage losses do not scale with weight, as passenger size does not scale with vehicle weight. Highway driving in particular is dominated by windage losses (after engine Carnot efficiencies of course). A half weight vehicle will see only modest highway MPG improvements not double, and will not be able to scale the engine size down by fully half either due to the horsepower requirements for reasonable highway performance not scaling down by half. So sadly, a half weight frame and body does not let you continue to scale the rest of the weighty vehicle down by half, which does not result in a doubling of MPG or range.

Wake me when there are battery exchanges or high capacity charging every 30 miles.... Until then pure EVs will be toys for the rich and short range commuter cars for a small minority.

As a Jeep owner, the biggest concern, for me personally, is what happens when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. It's not like you can carry extra batteries with you. At least with gas you can bring an extra container in the trunk when you know that you are going out on a trail, boating, etc. And, if you do get

You can bet on almost all aluminum in cars being replaced by carbon fiber. The one exception being engine parts as that seems to be more difficult. But as far as reclaiming carbon fiber after the cars life ends I suspect that carbon fiber could be crushed and shredded as an additive for concrete or asphalt and thus sequestered over and over again for centuries. Who knows? Maybe we will see 3d printed homes created with shredded carbon fiber put in place by quadcopters or bots.

6,000 tons of Carbon Fiber sounds like a lot until you compare it to total US car sales of more than 16 million units. That's about one and a third pound of Carbon Fiber per car.http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/0... [cnn.com]

I read about the Ford's. I know they've been replacing parts with aluminum for a few years on the F series. But the all aluminum one isn't out quite yet is it? I thought that was for the 2015 model year.

Yea, you'll probably start seeing them on showroom floors around late September, if I remember my automobile release cycles properly. That's assuming Ford doesn't scrap the idea between now and then (which seems unlikely, but always possible).

My favorite part of that article was the little '94 aluminum Sables with SHO V6 engines; I've always had a soft spot for experimental '90s cars, moreso if they actually made it to a decent production run, like the GMC Syclone. [wikipedia.org]

My entire point was that Carbon fiber is already as mainstream as aluminum in car bodies.

"Jaguar has been named the best manufacturer in the 2013 JD Power customer satisfaction survey. Jaguar's victory came off the back of the Jaguar XF, which finished third overall in the entire survey, as owners rated it as "excellent" in every area. In particular they praised reliability, dealership service and servicing and repair work."

How far back do you want to go? On higher end sports cars it has been around since the late 50s with things like the BMW 507, MB 300SL (aluminum body was an option), and AC Ace. The light weight aluminum body of AC ace is one of the reasons that Carol Shelby used it as a platform for the Shelby Cobra. There are probably others from the late 50s and early 60s but those are the ones I know of.

The new base 2014 Corvette Stingray also has an aluminum frame and many carbon fiber parts. Although, I heard the 2015 pickups are reusing some of the same tech and will have an all aluminum frame as well.

It's not THAT far from mainstream, but...it's not quite mainstream, and most likely never will be due to the ridiculous amount of labor required to make a CF part. The first time an economy car goes on sale with a CF part on it, then we'll talk.